Riad Salameh, governor of the Lebanese central bank has revealed plans to increase the minimum level of top quality capital reserves held by banks to 12% within seven years, Reuters has reported. The original plan involved asking lenders to raise reserves of Tier 1 capital to 10%, but in response to global economic crisis and European banking woes, Salameh said he had decided to hike the requirement to 12%, a figure he said would put Lebanese banks “among the highest in terms of capital adequacy”.